The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Grand Canyon

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Years ago Teddy Roosevelt pleaded with his countrymen to leave the Grand Canyon as it is -- a great wonder of nature. "You cannot improve it," Roosevelt said, "and man can only mar it." Well, the first conservationist President had terribly accurate foresight. The Grand Canyon and some other natural wonders of this country appear to be in considerable danger of being improved to death. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the Grand Canyon is something we all admire, even those of us who have never set foot in the place. We`ve seen pictures; we know of its breathtaking size -- 200 miles long, one mile deep; we know of its beauty -- that myriad of colors the shifting sun projects; the magnitude of it all has attracted millions of people. And that`s the problem: people. Us. The conflict between making it accessible and workable for those who come to see, without destroying or diminishing what they come to see. It`s a problem that affects just about all of the national parks in this country, and tonight, using the Grand Canyon as an initial focus, that`s what we`re going to talk about. Robin?

MacNEIL: The visitors` figures for the Grand Canyon Park alone are staggering. In the late 1960`s some two million people were visitors there. Last year the number had risen to three million, and it`s expected to go on rising. The park superintendent, Merle Stitt, tells us what effect those numbers are having.

MERLE STITT, Park Superintendent: I`m sure that some days this past summer and last summer we came close to the maximum. And I understand from our people that there was about 28,000 on the South Rim on a couple of days last summer. And I`m sure that`s close to a maximum.

MacNEIL: And those people have brought with them a host of problems and possible solutions, from trampled trails and traffic jams to bizarre ideas like astroturf and computerization.

STITT:...and we are going to have to use computerization to help us with the reservations we have in the Canyon. Cars definitely do present one of the biggest problems here on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon because the road system really wasn`t designed to carry the number of automobiles we`re getting at the present time. The bus system has solved a number of the problems but it`s also created a parking problem that we need to solve, and we have people working on that at the present time to determine where we`re going to put the parking, how much parking we ought to have and try to get that thing so that it`s adequate.

There are a number of planes and the number is increasing, apparently, each year -- people flying over the Canyon and below the rims; and of course the people hiking in the Canyon and some people on the river have felt that that`s been an intrusion on their wilderness experience. Now, there are more people, we found out, that see the Canyon from the air than there are those who hike into the Canyon. On human waste, what we`ve done in the past is, people had port a-potties, it was chemically treated, and then we permitted them to dump them off the river, away from it at a certain distance, at a certain depth and so forth. And we find out with the amount of use we have now that we can`t continue to do that because there`ll just be too much of it in the beach.

I think that the wilderness experience on the Grand Canyon is somewhat different today, of course, than i-t was in 1969 when we were only running one or two boats down there per year. In fact, there would be a number of years that, totaled together, there were only a hundred people went down; but as soon as Glen Canyon Dam was in and the rubber raft came about, increased use on the river went way up. It`s not, in my judgment, as much of wilderness experience as it was when you had one or two boats going down a year.

These problems are not peculiar to Grand Canyon National Park. They happen in any park where you have large visitation and where you have the kind of a resource that we have. As somebody has said before me, people love the parks to death, and that`s what happens.

LEHRER: One man who has a definite thought about the superintendent`s point is Michael Frome. They call him the "critic laureate" of the national parks; he`s written extensively on the need to preserve the country`s parks. He`s specifically the author of the Rand McNally National Parks Guide and a new book called simply, The National Parks. Mr. Frome, are the people loving the national parks to eat , in your opinion?

MICHAEL FROME: Yes, I think they are. I think the American people are going to the national parks in ever-increasing numbers because they represent a great sanctuary of nature that we must have. While the environment around the parks continues to deteriorate, people are searching for the great mystery and marvels that were embraced in what we saw of the Grand Canyon. I think we have to realize that we must restrict our amour of the parks and limit our numbers and the type of use that we enjoy in the parks.

LEHRER: All right, let`s take those one at a time. Restrict the numbers: how do you go about doing that? How do you say, "Look, only so many people can go see the Grand Canyon, the rest of you forget it `?

FROME: Well, the restriction of numbers is not all that difficult. It`s an established way of doing things all over the world. For example, in Spain there are the famous Caverns of Altamira with their prehistoric wall paintings, and they allow one thousand visitors a day; that`s been done. In the boundary waters canoe area of Minnesota you`ve got to get a permit to go into that area and the National Park Service itself has a permit system for back country use, and I think it works quite well, it`s an established practice and the American people do accept that.

What we have to do also is to define appropriate uses. As the superintendent indicated out there, the automobile causes tremendous problems. There are many, many other places designed for motor tourism, but I don`t think the national parks should be that kind of place.

LEHRER: What kind of places should they be then?

FROME: The national parks should be the kind of place where we get away from our super civilized society, a place where we find sanctuary, a place of quiet, a place of contemplation, a place for rediscovering basic human values in a natural environment.

LEHRER: But for a small number of people if you restrict it, right?

FROME:- Well, the parks belong to all the people; there is absolutely no doubt about that. But they belong to our generation. But unlike a generation, national parks are forever. Those national parks do not belong to our generation, they`re in our trust for future generations of Americans. And I hope and pray, and I`m working to make sure, that we can turn over our national parks in better condition to the next generation than we found them in ours.

LEHRER: Is that not happening now? If we were to turn them over right now would they be in better shape than our generation received them in?

FROME: No, I think we`ve had terrible impact on the parks, not only in terms of visitor use but in terms of environmental decay -- the use of poisons around the parks, air pollution over the parks; the superintendent cited the airplane. What we need is air space reservations for the parks so that people when they go to them can be free of that kind of experience. We have in Grand Teton National Park the threat of an expanded airport right in the park so that it can accommodate jets. Instead of expanding the airport they ought to take the airport out of the park and restore it to its natural values. Every park is impacted one way or another.

LEHRER: What is your view of how well the National Park Service, which has the responsibility for doing all of these things, for controlling and running the national parks, is meeting this challenge, at least in your opinion, that you`d lay it out?

FROME: Well, as your colleague indicated, I`m the critic laureate and therefore I have been critical of the National Park Service, spurring them on to do a better job, and in terms of the Grand Canyon I might say that they haven`t really met all of their obligations. They have a river management plan on the Colorado River that has not been completed; we have a wilderness proposal for the Grand Canyon that the administration has been holding up; and it`s one thing after another. There are people in the National Park Service who like to build roads and I have fought them in road construction in the great Smoky Mountains that would have cut the great wilderness of the Smokies in half.

LEHRER: In short, though, do you feel that the National Park Service agrees with you philosophically, that the problem should not be to accommodate more people but to figure out a way to keep more people from coming in?

FROME: Well, I would say that we have a new director of the Park Service and I`m very encouraged by his attitude and I hope that we can face these issues together and that the American people will understand and support the reasons for restrictions of use.

LEHRER: Let`s see about that. Robin?

MacNEIL: That new Director of the National Park Service, the man charged by the Carter administration with figuring out these problems, is Bill Whalen, who came to his job in June after many years with the Park Service in both urban and wilderness parks. How do you feel the Park Service has been doing, Mr. Whalen, up till now? I know you`ve just taken over a few months ago. How do you feel, in response to Mr. Frome`s charges?

BILL WHALEN: Well, I feel that the National Park Service has been . moving ahead on many of the fronts which Mr. Frome has brought up. In particular in parks such as Grand Canyon and Yosemite we`ve developed internal transportation systems and we are doing our best to deal with that auto mobile that has been...

MacNEIL: That means buses to take people around, right?

WHALEN: That is correct; we have buses in these parks that are taking people around. And I feel that this is one of the new things that we will be moving ahead on in the future in more of our parks in looking at these internal transportation systems and finding ways to develop those in a much bigger way.

MacNEIL: Where do you come down, Mr. Whalen, on the people-versus- preservation argument?

WHALEN: Well, if I`m going to err I`m going to err on the side of preservation rather than on the side of the overcrowding and bringing more people into our national parks when it would bring about any degradation of the basic resources. And the public is behind us on this; our master plan meetings that we have been conducting throughout the country in the major parks seem to indicate that the public is in an overwhelming way telling us that they will support restrictions and so forth in these major parks.

MacNEIL: That means restrictions like permits for so many people a day, or something like that?

WHALEN: That is correct. As far as our back country is concerned, our back country permit system has been well accepted throughout the country and there may be a day in the next two to three years when we`ll be talking about some form of a permit system in the more overcrowded parks. Now, we haven`t reached that point right at this time for this coming visitor season, although we are looking ahead towards reservation systems to come on line this coming visitor season in our campgrounds.

MacNEIL: One of the charges about leading to the degradation, as you put it, of our national parks is that there is too much willingness to increase facilities within the parks, which of course tend to attract more people, either for concessionaires or facilities like roads or toilets or whatever. How do you feel about that?

WHALEN: I feel that it`s a new day and age. Many of the things that Mr. Frome has brought up were things that have happened in the past over the past fifteen to twenty years where some of these new developments have occurred.

MacNEIL: And you don`t agree with those developments.

WHALEN: Given the era that we`re in today, I doubt very much whether we would see these kinds of developments ever come about again, and certainly I feel very strongly that we`re going to have to be very careful in our new master plans in keeping heavy development out of the fragile areas, possibly looking towards private interests outside the park to provide for the visitors` accommodations.

MacNEIL: I see. Do you agree with those who say we may reach the point -- and the superintendent himself mentioned it a moment ago -- we may reach the point where we`re actually going to have to schedule hikers over these trails by computer and lay astroturf or its equivalent to protect the actual trail surface from all those boots?

WHALEN: I can`t totally agree with the superintendent on laying astroturf, but I certainly would agree...

MacNEIL: To be fair to him, he didn`t mention that, somebody else did.

WHALEN: Right. The superintendent, Merle Stitt, is a great friend of mine and I didn`t think that carne from him, but...

MacNEIL: But the computerization did.

WHALEN: The computerization is something that we will be considering for the future as far as our uses are concerned. Now that`s a future plan, not one that we`re ready to bring out at this stage.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Gentlemen, let`s flesh out some of these points. First of all, back to you, Mr. Frome, on the development question that Robin asked Mr. Whalen: do you see that as either a past or present problem for the National Park Service, they`ve overbuilt inside the parks?

FROME: Well, I have to say that all of his predecessors have been friends of mine, and I think they tried to do the right thing as they saw it in the context of their times. I think that the question was very well put, and there has been the kind of development that generates the wrong kind of use. An example of that would be Canyon Village in Yellowstone National Park. It`s not a village, it`s a city of 10,000 people. And it breeds pollution and all the rest of it. It should never have been built, and if you ask me, it should be closed and eliminated. And if you ask me further...

LEHRER: Are you about to close Canyon Village, Mr. Whalen?

WHALEN: No, we`re not, and Canyon Village has to be upgraded in order to provide some services there in the great park of Yellowstone to take care of the visitation. Our wilderness proposals in Yellowstone call for ninety-five percent of the park to be in wilderness and only five percent in a developed area.

LEHRER: Well, look, let`s go to the broader philosophical question, if we can` call it that, which is that parks obviously have one purpose, do they not? I mean, do they have any relevance, Mr. Frome or Mr. Whalen, if people don`t come and see the park -- for instance, the Grand Canyon sits there and nobody`s able to look at it -- aren`t you going to have a problem, Mr. Whalen, from within the administration or politically if you start restricting public access to these natural wonders, as they are called?

WHALEN: Certainly we would have a problem if we went into excessive restrictions on the numbers of people that would be coming into the great parks such as Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, and I wasn`t proposing a major restriction. But we do have to set some limits. And as Mr. Stitt was mentioning, when you reach a 28,000 population on the South Rim of Grand Canyon, that`s probably reaching that limit. And if the trends would continue where the visitation would go up, then I feel that as Director I would have to recommend some restrictions there. And it would be politically a problem, but I think one that we`re going to have to face in the future.

LEHRER: Does the political problem concern you, Mr. Frome?

FROME: Well, I have to quote something you said in the introduction, and that is that you admire the Grand Canyon although you`ve never been there. And I think the Grand Canyon is a symbol of everything that is right about America:. It`s a symbol of America free of pollution and super technology; and it has meaning, not only in our country but to the whole wide world, to people who will never see it in all of their lives. Now it`s absolutely true that a politician can only rationalize protection in terms of constituent use, but that constituent use has been misstated all these years interns of somebody actually going into a park and sleeping in the park and enjoying that park, which is fine, within reason. But national parks have values beyond human use. National parks are repositories and sanctuaries for endangered species of wildlife which have no other place to go, and to plant life too.

LEHRER: Mr. Whalen, let`s talk money for a minute. The Park Service recently got an increase in its budget, I think, for this fiscal year, $100 million. How are you going to spend that money in keeping with your own beliefs that you just stated?

WHALEN: I think our primary emphasis is going to be on -- it will be on resource protection. And the second emphasis, the second priority will be on maintenance and rehabilitation of our existing trails; roads and structures because this is what we justified the need for these dollars on, it was justified by my predecessor, and I feel very strongly that that was a very firm and good justification and we will be following through, primarily with resource protection and...

LEHRER: Resource protection. Give me an example of that.

WHALEN: That would be working in our back country trail system and seeing that those trails were kept up to a high standard, it would be working in our historical sites and protecting the historical re sources, whether they be a building or a ...

LEHRER: But it wouldn`t mean cutting new roads through parks or cutting down trees for new campsites, building more toilets and that kind of thing.

WHALEN: No, we`re talking about maintaining in general in most of the parks about the same level of our campsites, and as far as development is concerned, there may be cases in some of the newer parks and newer areas where roads will have to be constructed. But these are all done after a lengthy public meeting process and the public has their opportunity to comment before any construction takes place. .

LEHRER: Mr. Frome, if it were up to you to spend this new money, how would you spend it? Would you spend it the same way Mr. Whalen wants to spend it?

FROME: No, I don`t think I would. You see, he referred to resource protection and then he talked about building trails or maintaining trails. That`s a visitor facility, it`s not protection of a wilderness resource. I would spend the money in two ways, principally. First, in the acquisition of new park areas and the acquisition of private landholdings within existing parks, which have a very serious negative impact on our national parks. I would put the money into land, first and foremost into land, I must say. Because the overuse of the parks demonstrates the critical need for more park lands -- close to where people live, I might say; that`s where I put my money. Secondly, I would put my money into using the parks as environmental training centers. I would bring city people into the parks, young people, old people, handicapped people, minority people who will never have a chance to see a park otherwise. I would put my money into bringing those people into the parks...

LEHRER: Isn`t that just going to crowd them up?

FROME: Not necessarily, because if we place a limit on the number of people who should come in, I would say these are the people who are deprived of the normal opportunities for outdoor recreation. And then also I would use that same money for an outreach program and send parks people into the cities and into the schools to show our young people the relationship of a national park as a healthy land system to the rest of our environment.

LEHRER: Mr. Whalen, what do you think of the Frome plan to spend your money?

WHALEN: I think the Frome plan comes pretty close to the Whalen plan because we were talking primarily about operational money at first, and one of the major thrusts of my administration of the parks is to develop a much better environmental education program, as we would call it, to use the parks as a backdrop of encouraging teachers and school groups and many others to come in, and as a result of the park`s resources to be able to learn in a much broader way about their own environment and to take this back home with them. We have had over the years external programs with our rangers going out, and we`re going to continue that with these new increases that we`ve received this year because I believe in it wholeheartedly.

Mike mentioned land and expending dollars for new park lands or buying up inholdings. It`s one of the first directives that I issued upon taking office, was to move ahead with a much more aggressive purchase of our in- holdings within the national parks system.

LEHRER: "Inholding" meaning land that...

WHALEN: Private lands that are within the boundaries of the national parks. And we are moving ahead in an aggressive manner there and purchasing these as quickly as possible. So, many of the things that Mike mentions I have to agree with, and it was just a matter of where the emphasis lies.

LEHRER: All right. Robin?

MacNEIL: To follow up on that acquiring new parks, if you acquired them, would they really divert people in any sort of useful numbers away from the great attractions like the Grand Canyon that people have been coming to recently, as communications improve and more and more people know about them? Aren`t people always going to want to go to the Grand Canyon because it`s a spectacular thing, whereas some new park might be just nice wilderness but not have that particular attraction?

FROME: I think the question is very valid and the answer is that people would still want to go to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or Yosemite or what have you. But one reason for establishing new parks is we really know very little about our own country. We don`t know -- and we have not therefore protected -- such magnificent areas as the tall grass prairie in Kansas, or Mount Mitchell, which is the highest mountain east of the Rocky Mountains, in North Carolina, or the Channel Islands of California. And if you were to go to the Channel Islands you just wouldn`t believe that such a magnificent piece of real estate belongs to the United States. It really in some ways reminds me of the Galapagos Islands in South America. The kind of area that we need close to people that may or may not divert them from the Grand Canyon is something like Cuyahoga in the Cleveland-Akron area; there`s a beauty spot right there. In our day and age, space itself is an endangered and desirable fragment of America that we must save.

MacNEIL: Mr. Whalen, do you think that creating new parks would in any way solve the problem of overcrowding in these major attractions like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or whatever?

WHALEN: I really don`t believe that the creation of new parks would solve that problem, but the development of new parks in and around major urban centers is certainly something that is needed in this country.

MacNEIL: But they wouldn`t be wilderness experiences, would they. They`d be places to go and have picnics and get out in the fresh air, would they?

WHALEN: Well, you could take our Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Point Reyes Seashore in San Francisco, which is within about a half hour`s drive from the city, an hour`s drive of five million people, and the Congress has created a wilderness area right at Point Reyes National Seashore. So there are some of these lands still left in America that certainly can be set aside. Mike mentioned a few of them that are active proposals now in the Congress and within our department, and hopefully we`ll see what kind of action will take place in this next year.

MaCNEIL: Gentlemen, is there implicit in what you`re saying a kind of distinction here between two types of people who use the park, that you`re in favor of people who like the outdoors and are going to go out and hike and respect the wilderness and really get out and work in it, so to speak - - use their energy -- and are you against those who simply want to drive up and take pictures of it? Is there some suggestion of that in what you`re saying, Mr. Whalen?

WHALEN: No, there`s not. I`m certainly not against the people that come to the parks and are there for maybe a short period of time and willing to take a picture and stay there for a short period of time; after all, they`re Americans and they`ve helped to pay for these parks. And so in no way am I saying that I`m against those kind of people coming to the parks, because they have every right to be there. It is my hope, though, that they will come and stay for a longer period of time and really be able to experience the true value of what the parks are.

MacNEIL: Mr. Frome, do you make a distinction there between the two uses?

FROME: No, but I don`t like the discussion of elitism, because I think that parks belong to all people; and in fact John Muir, the patron saint of national parks, called the national parks the people`s playgrounds. And David Thoreau, when -he wrote the book- The Maine Woods, also attached an appendix on exactly how to prepare and how to hire a guide and what it would cost and so forth. So that the best of us see the wilderness in terms of use by all people. But I would like to see a greater diversity of recreation areas around the national parks through state parks, which can give the balance, or national forests. It`s unfortunate that our national forests these days have become one great big timber factory and are not available for recreation by the people.

MacNEIL: Thanks, Mr. Frome. I think we have to end the discussion there. Thank you both, and Mr. Whalen. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back on Monday night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.